A border ambush opened the Mexican-American War
On this day · 25 April 1846
A 63-man U.S. patrol rode into 1,600 Mexican troops on disputed ground, and within weeks two nations were at war.
On the morning of April 25, 1846, Captain Seth Thornton led roughly 63 U.S. dragoons along the north bank of the Rio Grande, scouting territory both the United States and Mexico claimed. Near Rancho de Carricitos, some 28 miles upriver from Fort Texas, they blundered into about 1,600 Mexican troops under General Anastasio Torrejon.
The clash was brief and one-sided. Eleven Americans were killed and 46, including Thornton himself, were taken prisoner. Almost no one grasped that a continental war had just begun.
President Polk announced that “American blood has been spilled upon American territory.”
News reached Washington on May 10, and that line did its work: Congress declared war on May 13, 1846. The fight that followed would cost Mexico roughly half its territory, redrawing the map of North America. It started, fittingly, not with a grand declaration but with a single patrol that simply rode too far into ground nobody could agree on.
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